


Battleground

by polotiz



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 3x07 only half happened, Actually just battle fluff, Angst, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Heda Lexa, Protective Clarke, With a side of angst, and we all know what that means
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9249056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polotiz/pseuds/polotiz
Summary: Lexa is injured in battle."It frightens you, the relationship between her and Death… All those times you have seen grim acceptance of her fate reflected in her eyes, and no matter how many times you do this, you come for her, no matter how many times her broken body finds itself in your care, mended and whole again, she fights like it is her last.How often you have felt like you are fighting Death itself, for her."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just another fic writer exploring the "what if" of future moments had 3x07 ended differently.

You tilt your head to the sky, squinting at the oppressive grey that envelops the world, horizon to horizon. The type of cold, soupy monochromatic hue that blankets the ground, chilling your bones, and numbing your senses, as if light itself was losing the fight with darkness and the sky was simply too old and too weary to remain high enough to hold it. Lingering shouts and clashes of weaponry punctuate what should otherwise be a picture of absolute stillness; where nothing _should_ exist, yet still _did,_ and the same tiredness that pervades your entire body with a force so strong you can almost _feel_ the sky on your shoulders, weighs you down with the force of its inevitability.

Your body is stiff from the cold, left arm aching from the weight of the blade you have yet to properly master. What you lack in skill you make up for in speed and unpredictability, and though you are generations behind them in experience, you can hold your own, well enough.

You steady your breathing and cast your eyes around, seeking… searching, ignoring the shadows gnawing at your gut. You know full well your sword arm isn’t the reason you are allowed onto these battlefields…  

_“Wanheda!”_

From across the clearing you hear it.

Your muscles coil and your eyes widen, and with the full weight of your heart in your mouth, you run.

The earth gives underneath your feet; your boots beating at a soil that is pliable with the onset of winter rains, mud flinging behind you and latching to your trousers mid-calf, dripping into the holes your shoelaces thread through and down into your undersoles. Your jacket, weather-worn and bulky jostles your frame, now battle-hardened and sinewy, yet carrying more weight in muscle than you ever had on the Ark.

…and you are never more grateful for it than you are now.

“ _Wanheda!_ ”

You can all but _feel_ the urgency in the soldier’s voice… and you try to pretend it doesn’t claw at your chest with a fear so fierce you imagine you haven’t felt it a dozen times before. You ignore the weight of the air and the catch in your throat and the sting in your eyes and run _harder…_ across the clearing toward the small outcrop of trees that shield the light from the figures collected there, only barely able to make out the soldier hunched over a mound in the dirt, hands braced on his upper thighs. As you near them he raises one hand to signal you.

…But you’re not looking….

…Because drawing closer you now see the mound materialise into arms and legs splayed in different directions, and you immediately _know_ what you are seeing yet still you drag an impatient hand across your forehead to pull the loose braids from your eyes and skid to a halt, lungs burning with the need for more oxygen than you have space to provide…only for her name to tumble awkwardly your lips, shaky and poorly formed, the weakness of your breath snatched away by the shadows of the approaching night.

“Lexa...”

It hangs barely a moment in the air… an admission and a plea...

Her lower body is covered by the brutishly-sized body of an Azgeda warrior, her eyes squeezed shut and breaths flittering in and out in terribly shallow movements. The image sends a shiver down your spine, catapulting you back to a time when you held her blood inside her body with only the force of your hands, when you begged her and _begged_ her not to leave you, to let you fix her.

…and you had. You _had_.

…And now you stand as someone who, by reputation and by name, commands Death to your will, to keep her alive.

You steel yourself, balling the old tremor in your fingers into tight fists and glance sharply upward at the soldier, who is eyeing you worriedly, waiting for your confirmation and instruction. Baring your teeth, the voice you force from within you carries the strength of hundreds of battles. Hundreds of losses… but none so terrifying as to lose her.

“Get him off her.”

You bark the order in trigedasleng, and the soldier nods once, reaches down and bunches his giant fists into the Azgeda’s coat, flinging him off her prone body in one complete movement.

Her gasp pulls you to your knees, and you find yourself reaching for her as her eyes blink open for a brief moment, before the pain becomes too much and they snap shut again, breaths ragged and jumpy, lips attempting to form words that cannot escape. The moment your hands connect with her shoulder she flinches, unseeing, and you curse yourself for your carelessness.

"Lexa." You speak as calmly as your thundering heart will allow, fingers hovering at her temple. The tremor has returned but nothing you can care about right now. You are too distracted by the blood trickling from the edge of her mouth, too concerned with the wheeze on her breath. “It’s just me.”

She mouths your name, then, and something bursts open inside you, suffusing all of your empty spaces with adrenaline and fear and _desperation…_ Your hands fly over her body, pressing and releasing and assessing and calculating as she hisses and mutters expletives in your ear. You think… somewhere along the way, the words _not again_ fall from your lips, and when she turns to you, blinking her eyes open long enough to hold you, oxygen becomes a lead weight deep in your lungs, and you wonder if the beads of sweat slipping down your cheeks are sweat at all.

“Clarke.”

Your hands still at her shoulder, and your eyes slide closed, your breath suddenly untethered. Cracked ribs, split lip, concussion... even the deep laceration to her thigh. Risky yes, dangerous to many, but in your hands and those of the healers all treatable…. all wounds you have seen before. In a practiced move you tear a sizeable strip of cloth from your tunic and wrap it tightly around her upper leg, ignoring her grunt of pain when you pull it tight.

"Arrange a stretcher." You demand of the soldier.  "Now."

"…No."

The word is hissed out from between clenched teeth. You startle at the sound of it, and fix a glare in her direction. Her eyes open again, and flicker once to the soldier who has moved to make off, before returning to you. The unspoken motivation clear to you. 

"Lexa please..." You offer helplessly, because you know you will lose.

" _Gona_." She reaches to him with her left arm, and you know she has chosen very carefully, because her gaping leg wound is on her right.

He looks up at you, a fleeting apology in his eyes and it warms you, somewhat, that _Heda's_ legendary stubbornness is not only to your displeasure. He clasps her forearm, and, as if she were nothing more than a stick on the ground, he pulls her to her feet. You know it is a mistake the second you see her teeth set, her body sway in an uncontrolled arc around his body and immediately you are flanking her, slipping your arm around her waist and hers across your shoulder. 

"Easy..." You breathe into her ear, adjusting your stance to receive most of her weight. You know the soldier could likely carry her over one arm, but she is still his Commander. And you... The two of you have long had nothing more to prove to each other. She eases down onto your shoulder and stumbles, wincing at the sudden movement and you hold yourself firm. "Easy.." You repeat, more gently this time, resting your lips for a stilling moment against her temple as the remainder of her weight settles on you in a way you would gladly take, a million times over.  "I've got you."

It frightens you, the relationship between her and Death… All those times you have seen grim acceptance of her fate reflected in her eyes, and no matter how many times you do this, you come for her, no matter how many times her broken body finds itself in your care, mended and whole again, she fights like it is her last.

...How often you have felt like you are fighting Death itself, for her.

You move. Slowly at first, adjusting your stride to the added weight pressing your boots further into the mud. You are satisfied enough, that the motion of her right foot meeting the dirt leaves no imprint, and the soldier is too busy looking forward to notice. 

"We need to send warning to..." She grimaces as you navigate around a dip in the terrain. "The villages. They were... Far better organised than I expected."

"We will." You assure her, cataloguing the sounds of her voice and the shape of each breath as she moves. You pretend you aren’t counting them.

Lexa shakes her head, the fingers of her right hand digging into your upper arm. 

"Where is Alziel? We need him to-" 

" _Lexa_.." You keep your voice low so as not to draw attention to the way you challenge her in front of her soldier, who is carefully picking his way around bodies, leading you both to camp. "-we need to stabilise you." You are becoming more and more aware of the blood still seeping through her clothing and into yours, despite your makeshift tourniquet. " _Beja_ ," you dare to whisper in her own language, because you know it means more. "Please, Lexa, Let them fix you first, then we can focus on the rest. I promise."

You watch the set of her jaw, the way it pulls at the smudges of her war-paint. Watch the flare of her nostrils as she sucks in a breath, only to have it fail and her mouth fall open again.

She is silent the rest of the way to the healers tent, and you wonder how much is driven by her conceding or if it is the listlessness of blood loss. The long shadow of the healer’s hut reaches your feet and you think you feel her lean a little more heavily into you. It is only when you see the knot in her brow and follow the direction of her eyes that you realise...

“Thirty seven.” You murmur the answer to the question you know she will ask. “Twenty injured.”

She stumbles at the threshold as a flurry of startled healers gather, immediately leaving their patients and urging the three of you to a cot against the far wall. You intercept two with a sharp look, urging them silently away, knowing how it cuts to Lexa’s very core the perception her life is more important, more _valuable_ than another’s... and pause long enough for the burly soldier to be coaxed out from underneath Lexa’s arm and urged back outside.

It has been a long time since anyone has dared to do the same to you. Now, they simply nod in your direction, murmuring the name you have come to own, if for nothing else but this.

“ _Wanheda.”_

-And begin their work.

There was a time when _you_ directed _them_ ; when your knowledge of medicine was still superior to theirs, before Abby established the clinic at Arkadia where all healers of the _kongeda_ trained and now… _now_ your medical experience is amateur at best…

…But that does not gnaw at you as it once did, because you have learned also; wonderful, awful, _frightening_ things… and right now in Lexa’s eyes is a distance that medicine can never reach, one you know better than the anatomy of yours and hers combined, and as the healer begins to clean and tend to Lexa’s wounds you place your hands gently on either side of her face, willing her to look at you.

“Lexa.”

Her eyes clear a moment and find yours, and your breath halts in your chest at the depths of pain swimming in them, laid bare for you. She grimaces suddenly and squeezes them shut, and you glance behind you to see the first of what will be many stitches sliding through her skin.

You know it is not just Death you are fighting, for her.

And it is only once the healers have left the two of you, in the stillness and shadows of the receding light fought by torches flickering in far corners of the hut, that she speaks again.

“They died for me.” She whispers, the ache in her voice a vice around your heart, for nothing is more impossible to you than the burden she carries. You only shake your head, hands gently trailing over her cheeks, war-paint smudging under your fingertips.

“Not for you, Lexa.” You tell her, words thick in your own throat, and you fill your voice with all the conviction you have when you continue. “They died for the world you are fighting for.” Lexa winces and your fingers flinch involuntarily inward, thumbs brushing new patterns on her cheeks. “-The world they want for their families, their children.”

She searches your face as if looking for falsehood; and you banish your own fears from your expression with a fierceness only _she_ brings to your heart.

“There is a school.” You are careful to keep your voice below the volume of the hurried discussion of the healers across the tent from the two of you. A small smile tilts your lips and you do not miss the way her eyes flick down to them, before returning to you as you tell her “The children are safe.”

You watch the way her brow furrows again, the tiny bob of her throat, feel the cot sink further under her weight, and with a tip of your finger you trace a wistful path along her hairline.

“They died for peace, Lexa.” You say. “They believed in that. They believe in you.” Your fingers sift gently through her hair, careful not to jostle the gash above her eyebrow, and press a sot kiss to the clammy skin of her temple, only to breathe the words in tiny puffs of air that skitter past her ear. “They believe in you, _Heda_.”

You taste salt on your lips and you hear her stuttered breath as she settles, eyes closing and head tilting further into you.

No, it is not the only thing you fight for, at all.

“Will you tire of this, Clarke?” She whispers after many moments of silence. “Taking all my broken parts and putting them back together?” Her hand finds yours, squeezing it gently in a knowing way, that leaves your stomach in knots. “I know you suffer.”

You smile against her skin. You know, that should anything happen to her, that should you ever fail, the absurdity of your title and what it represents would be exposed; that your usefulness would end, that your life would be forfeit.

But the thought of your own demise by their hands doesn’t frighten you, because you realised… long ago… that there is no you without her. And you would do this, _exactly_ this, go into battle after battle if only just to be sure she survived.

“I’ve tasted life without you, Lexa.” You say, releasing your hands and lifting yourself just enough that you can touch your forehead to hers. “It is bitter.”

The heat of the tent has finally begun to work its way into your joints, loosening your muscles and soothing your aching body. Each breath Lexa takes ghosts over your lips, slowing your heart until it has settled into a solid, calming rhythm… until she speaks again.

“ _Klark.._ "

The sound of your name rolling off her tongue tastes of forever.

And finally… _finally..._ for the first time since blood was spilled you risk touching your lips to hers, except this time you think the salt you taste might be your own.  

…and you wonder, if she knows she fights just the same, for you.

**Author's Note:**

> So... I was suffering through a bit of writer's block when this came to me. Just a small handful of not very much, but I've enjoyed putting something down in writing again, so thank you to any and all who read :)  
> Hope it's okay  
> T
> 
> (any and all obscenities can be directed to polotiz.tumblr.com)


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